1. Technical Field
The inventive concept relates generally to image sensors. More particularly, the inventive concept relates to image sensors including a pixel array and micro lenses for focusing light onto the pixels of the array.
2. Description of the Related Art
Generally, an image sensor system includes an image sensor and a signal processor processing image information produced by the image sensor.
The image sensor may include a semiconductor device that transforms incident light into an electric signal (i.e., performs photoelectric transformation) to provide image information corresponding to the incident light.
The image sensor system may conduct image interpolation, color correction, auto white balancing (“AWB”), gamma correction, color conversion, etc. on the image information.
In a conventional auto white balancing method, candidate light sources are determined by statistical analysis of the image, a light source (e.g., daylight, an artificial light source) which has a highest probability of producing the image is selected, and auto white balancing is performed based on the assumption that that the image is being produced under light cast by the selected light source.
In the conventional method, input image data is merely used to conduct the auto white balancing. Therefore, auto white balancing may produce poor results when the input image data represents a monochromatic image or various light sources exist.